15.4 Player killing (PK or PvP)

Because player-killing (PK) is a common aspect of Achaea, we offer the following guidelines to facilitate an environment where players can roleplay their characters as they wish, while keeping things fair and enjoyable for their opponents.
 
The Guidelines
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1. There must be a justifiable role-play reason for every attack and death.
 
This does not mean you can attack other players repeatedly just for being a member of an opposing organisation. Neither can you justify your behaviour by claiming something like "my character is a psycho killer!" A player must have done something to you to warrant an attack.

Note that this is not limited only to direct PK-related activity. It is perfectly valid roleplay reasoning to kill someone for insulting you, for provocative language in any medium (tells, messages, says, shouts, clans, etc), for attacking your ship, and so on. 
 
Those of you who go around regularly attacking players because they belong to an organisation you dislike or for other spurious reasons, will incur administrative punishment.
 
If a situation arises where your reason(s) for attacking someone are called into question, you are expected to be able to explain why. If you can't remember why you were going to attack someone, you should probably just let the matter drop.

2. Being an enlisted soldier of army rank 3 or above is sufficient reason for a hostile raiding party to attack you within your own city boundaries in pursuit of a sanction.

3. Being an enlisted soldier of any rank is sufficient reason for raiders to attack you during an ongoing sanctioned raid, provided you are within the city boundaries.

4. Being on a treacherous plane (see HELP PLANES) puts you at risk of being attacked by anyone, for any reason - or no reason at all. These planes are FREE PK and any combat that takes place therein has no spillover outside of them. 

5. Infamous status is sufficient reason for any member of the Quisalis or Ivory Mark, the Dauntless, or other infamous players to attack you at any time. See HELP INFAMY for further details.

6. Characters marked as a "thief" on HONOURS will be considered OPEN PK to the game at large. This means that anyone can attack a marked "thief", and the thief can seek retaliation for these attacks. The thief cannot hire a mark for these attacks and must handle their retaliation themselves.

7. Membership of the Quisalis or Ivory Mark, or the Dauntless, is sufficient reason to be attacked by any player at any time. Members of these organisations may pursue retaliation, but may not file contracts in order to seek retribution.

8. Members of an Elemental Faction may attack anyone on their native plane that is not a member of that faction for any reason. They may also freely defend that plane's denizens or territory. This includes the Elemental Embassy.

9. Forest enemies being within the forest is not sufficient reason to attack them unless forest defences are active following exterminations.

10. Being in possession of a relic (HELP RELICS) is sufficient reason for anyone to attack you at any time. Being killed for holding a relic permits the target to seek retribution personally, but they may not hire a mark to carry it out for them.

11. Members of organisations that have formal ally status with another organisation are permitted to defend the territory of those organisations provided the target has been warned once on any prior occasion by any member of the defending organisation. Those who are attacked in this context are free to seek retaliation of their choosing.

12. Defending other players in fights that are not your own, or likewise assisting other players with fights that are not your own such as bounties or contracts, is sufficient reason for the opposing player(s) to pursue retaliation against you at a later date, either personally or via the mark system. Announce news posts #5056 and #5278 have additional details on this subject.

13. Members of cities, houses, orders, or high clans may defend their territory freely against enemies or attackers within the boundaries of those organisations. For cities, this extends to the defendable location immediately outside a city entrance. Attacking players who are in the adjacent area but not otherwise at your border will open you to later retaliation for doing so.

14. Players who abuse organisation privileges and authority to steal from the organisation (org theft), are considered OPEN PK to all members of that organisation until the theft is considered resolved.

15. The existence of totems and vines out in the world do not grant you a reason to kill someone. If they are being actively used against you or are being used by someone as provocation, these are reasons to seek retribution.

16. When at sea anyone can be attacked for simply being at sea. If you are the captain of a ship that is sunk and you were not the aggressor (you did not fire the first shot), you can seek retribution for the sinking on land either by your own hands or by hiring a Mark. You cannot hire for deaths at sea, only ship sinking. If you are a crew member and you die at sea, that is the risk you took going to sea.

You cannot resolve land conflicts via ship sinking. Someone sinking your ship repeatedly is not harassment, they do not need a reason, it is the risk of being at sea.

17. The Undead are always open to being attacked! But be careful, they may fight back.

18. Undead are allowed to attack the living in areas currently influenced by the Underworld. (This means any area with the following line in room: Soul's blood pools on ashen earth turned dust, an inviolable call to death's advance.)

Some notable exceptions:

1. Mining: If your mines are being attacked by another player's legions, this does not open them to attack by you as the conflict involved is contained specifically to the legion system.

2. It is not appropriate to counter-retaliate in a circular manner. Perpetuating an ongoing cycle of retribution is not allowed. Ongoing conflicts should be pursued via rivalry (see HELP RIVALS).
 
What if someone has just killed me?
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You should always strive to deal with conflict in an appropriate in-character manner. This may be simply killing the person yourself in vengeance, contracting a member of the Mark to assassinate them (see HELP CONTRACTS), pursuing political avenues of revenge, or other creative solutions.
 
In most cases, you probably know why someone attacked and/or killed you. But when in doubt, ask.
 
Retribution (i.e. enacting vengeance yourself or with the aid of a Quisalis/Ivory Mark) must be taken within a reasonable time frame. If a number of Achaean months have passed since an incident occurred, with no further indication that there is an ongoing conflict, it is likely that you have missed the window for taking action. E.g. You can't kill someone just for insulting your mother two years ago.

The ISSUE system exists as a last resort when any and all in character methods of resolution have failed. It is not to be used for one-off deaths, nor for situations that you have involved yourself in deliberately. The administration should only be involved in scenarios where egregious rule breaking has occurred, and in almost every circumstance, one true-kill (a kill, a starburst, then a second kill to true death) is not considered egregious. PK related issues that ignore this will be immediately dismissed.


Counting Cause
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Cause counting is not conducive to a positive PK environment.

We wish for engagements to be fluid things without people worrying they might have just given someone a reason to kill them multiple times based on a technicality: so one revenge kill per genuine engagement is all that is permitted.

Note: we consider an engagement to be over when a non-trivial amount of time has elapsed. Going to Sunderlands, leaving for five-ten minutes then coming back is still the same fight for all practical purposes.